There was a car show at a town a few miles west of home this evening, so we thought we'd take the Ghost over to check out the cars and have a burger. As we were pulling into the parking lot a guy comes running out and waves us down, "you want to be in the show?" Well I said we really aren't in show condition, no back seat etc, but he told us why not so we let them park us in the show line. Lots of pretty, shiny cars there but once I popped the hood on the Packard we had a crowd, didn't manage to go see the other cars until the thing was nearly over due to the questions and conversations. Unintentionally fun time.

Nor the alternator, and I'm pretty sure that air freshener has been renewed. The horror.

Check that the power gets to the lights at the right times, clean up your grounds and contacts really well, and if you need to splice in a wire fix don't worry about originality but just make it workable. Then you can drive it and have fun!

circuit breakers are a thermal device, over rated current through calibrated resistance = circuit interruptus. So if it's getting real hot in use then either there is too much current going through it and it isn't opening (broken) or more likely the contacts inside are corroded and that is causing higher resistance.

From the pix it looks like a lot of rust bubbling through some bondo in the lower panels. Which makes me suspicious of floorboards, trunk floor, fender edges etc. so crawl under and look at those areas, a lot of work if it's a Flintstones car to weld in new floors etc. otherwise it looks clean but more like a $3K car tops than $14K. Parts are readily available from normal sources and the main Packard parts dealers. Check if wiring has been updated, otherwise plan to do that as petrification will make shorts common as the insulation flakes off. It's a 60+ yr old car. So look at the brake lines, fuel lines, and wiring for rust and decay. Those door panels are original so the fabric will be real fragile. And the seats may well just be covers over old rotten stuff, so the padding could be all mouse nests. You don't know what conditions it was stored in during it's life and how complete the repairs were when they got it driving again, so the level of hobby work you're looking forward to will be seen by careful detective work on your pre buy. I'm a pessimist but you want to bargain them down from a position of knowledge, and they want a buyer to see shiny things and give in to lust. And no matter how much money gets put into it like you say it won't be an investment vehicle. Some modernization isn't a bad thing, like the starter button - the carb switches wore out and stuck, so good riddance although a neat system when it worked. Good luck!

Not much progress lately on the Ghost, life got in the way. Now that we've gotten past a few big events and I've gotten my ND and Alberta summer crews into the field I can get a little time to work on the car again.

I had put some hubcaps on last fall, then removed them to detail and of course that process chipped up the paint on the wheels. So I removed them all and touched the paint up today. Took the opportunity to grease all the front end zerks, and now I've pulled the exhaust system off so that I can shorten my front pipe about an inch, which will allow the muffler to move forward a bit and give me some room to fabricate a hanger at the rear of the muffler. Stuff only I will know about but it was bugging me.

My lovely wife is feeling better and has made some progress on the rear seat cover, once she is happy with the details she'll sew it up and then I'll see how it fits on my rebuilt seat padding.

I tried to test fit the rear wheel skirts but the LH fender is too beat up at the rear, so that side doesn't fit. But the skirts themselves are in decent shape, so we'll get them correct when the body work gets done.

I bought a rebuild kit for my fuel pump from Then and Now, my vacuum spring etc was broken and they had all the parts I needed. Dave's (O_D) suggestion of Arthur Gould Rebuilders is also a good one, not sure if they sell kits for you to do it yourself but if you sent it to them it would be done right and not overly expensive (for you the big expense is shipping). I sent my water pump to them and it was really no more than a kit. Those are the outfits I can recommend from experience at least.

I remember someone was thinking about producing new aluminum heads. Not sure if this project ever came to fruition?

https://packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=14370&forum=12

I disassembled and cleaned up my spare grille, it has nicer chrome than my original unit with the "Korean War Chrome" crappy finish. Some corrosion and a couple bolts twisted off so I had to drill out the remains and retap the holes. Reassembled with new hardware and the "teeth" from my original grille, have to keep those!

I had to replace the turn signal light sockets as these were rusted out, I found some universal sockets for the 1157 bulbs that I am using (12v), they crimp into the holes but I added some epoxy in the back too. Wire them with my proper coded and colored wires and made sure that the marker uses the single element, while the turn signals use the dual elements in the bulb - learned that from a discussion on Charlie's blog (51/52 Packards).

We bought some vinyl, burlap and foam on sale so I stripped the rear seat and we are plotting out our designs for the seats and door panels. If my wife's sewing machine turns out to be unable to handle the vinyl material, our upholstery guy at work says she can borrow one of his 17 (!) machines.

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We're lucky that our car has been owned since nearly new by my wife's family, her great grandfather bought it from a local lawyer who ordered it but found it was too much to handle (80 something yrs old and no power steering) and so traded it back in after just 2 or 3 days, and Grampa Ted traded a '49 Packard for this car. Here's a picture of Ted as a German Army soldier during the Boxer Rebellion in China, 1901. Google it, in that little war the Germans were good guys along with the US among others. He came to the US in 1903 and homesteaded in SW North Dakota in 1907. The original house still stands on the farm, though not used now.

Ted died in 1963 and that was the last year this car was licensed, after that it was used to chase cows and foxes, and eventually parked in the trees, then moved to the shed in the '70's. And that's where we pulled it out of in 2013, significantly beat up but not badly rusted.

That history is what makes this car worth fixing up and keeping. Too cool to part with now.

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